Vikings in New Hampshire? Yes, and on the Chesapeake too, a thousand years ago, Range View Farm author Martha Carlson imagines in Sagas of A Vinland Timber Scout. Carlson's historical fiction chronicles the travels of a Vinland scout who sails south from Leif Erikson's camp in Newfoundland along the Atlantic seaboard.
Sven, the timber scout, meets native peoples on the coast of what is now Maine and joins them for the winter in the White Mountains.With Grey Wing, a translator, and her uncle Saco, a scientist and tribal leader, the Viking travels as far as the Chesapeake Bay and the headwaters of the Potomac River.
Sven is looking for white oak for Viking shipbuilders. His friend Bjarni is scouting for iron for steelmaking.
The book is a tribute to the American forest and what it may have been like a millenium ago. It is a love story between a man and a woman from different cultures. And it is a story of those cultures as great change began to take place across the Atlantic in Europe.
One after another, the sagas spin yarns, play games and celebrate the seasons. "I wish I could have been there," says Peter Chipman who edited the book.
A journalist, conservationist and teacher, Carlson is currently studying climate change and its impact on New England sugar maples at the University of New Hampshire. She lives in Sandwich, NH, with her husband Rudy Carlson. Carlson self published the book. It was printed by Independent Color Press, Center Ossipee, NH.
_0.thumbnail.jpg "tomato")